I happen to have quite a few people who live within 150 feet of me, and so do other people who don't live in single family houses on large lots.
What happens when everyone in the neighborhood buys one or more of these devices? I like to listen to AM and shortwave radio. This is already difficult due to the high RF noise level. I am also a licensed amateur radio operator. There is no "stuff that isn't being used right now."
If you want increased range, you will have to increase transmitter power (actually ERP) and/or reduce the bit rate. Increasing transmitter power uses more of a limited resource, leaving less for other spectrum users.
There is no free lunch. Any RF communications system, no matter what buzz-words it has, uses RF spectrum. UWB is a broadband noise source. Depending on siting, power levels, and the number of devices deployed, this could cause severe interference to other users of the RF spectrum. Your car may not emit much pollution, but when 5 million of your neighbors drive cars, we have a problem. Due to inadequate FCC regulations, there is already a high level of RF noise in many places.
I've often thought that this could be a profitable new business for the mafia. They could sell spam insurance. Spam one of their customers and you get a free concrete flotation device and a swimming lesson.
Assuming he used PGP, they could have cracked his pass phrase and/or bugged his machine. If the FBI/NSA/CIA is really interested in your mail, you better have a tempest certified computer room with a 24-hour armed guard who can't be bribed. Otherwise, you are screwed.
Several local book stores have had huge piles of Tolkien books for months, crowding out other books in the SF/Fantasy section. I assume this is because of the upcoming movies. I'm not sure if anyone is actually buying the books. Maybe the book stores think that all of the people that see the movie are going to buy three different editions of LotR.
Until such a new model is found, the big content industries and other vested interests will continue to keep an upper hand by unleashing their armies of lawyers.
For some reason, this made me think of Army of Darkness. Hordes of evil undead creatures besieging a castle, with Jack Valenti and Hilary Rosen commanding the legions of the damned.
Most modern modems are "software defined". The modem is implemented as software for a general purpose programmable DSP. The "winmodems" just use your system's CPU to replace the DSP on the modem board. The problem with a winmodem is that it replaces a $5 DSP on the modem board with a $200 CPU on your motherboard.
This is already happening to a certain extent. AMSAT has a PSK demodulator that is implemented with a programmable DSP. Many of the experimental digital modes on HF use a PC with a sound card and the appropriate software to demodulate the audio from the transceiver. DSPs have become popular for audio filtering and processing, like the boxes that will automatically notch out unmodulated carriers from the audio in a SSB receiver.
The trick would be to design a reasonably priced receiver that fed the IF into an ADC, allowing a microprocessor to do IF filtering, demodulation etc.
It can happen. The static discharge can produce a short circuit in the chip, resulting in the catastrophic destruction of the chip. I've seen chips with small craters in the middle of the package where the silicon die used to be.
The problem has nothing to do with the FCC certification of the Palm or the user's computer. The FCC is concerned about radiation from electronics devices causing interference to other RF spectrum users, not about the safety or reliability of electronics devices.
A serial port (RS-232 interface) that can be damaged or destroyed by the static electricity from a user is poorly designed.
The 'stable' code ought to be good enough to blindly install on mission critical boxes.
That would be a very bad idea. Stable is a relative term. Subscribe to the freebsd-stable mailing list for a while and you will see what I mean. Stable is more stable that current, but it is still a moving target with occasional glitches and bugs. Stick to the release versions if you want to be conservative. Even then, you need to test a new release before using it for mission critical functions.
I remember seeing a schematic for an electronic circuit that explicitly specified a particular Radio Shack part for one of the semiconductor devices. The circuit would not work with commercial quality devices, only the Radio Shack part could be relied upon to have sufficient leakage current, which is normally a bad thing, for the circuit to work.
Satellites don't last forever. Solar panels and batteries degrade over time. Station-keeping propellant is consumed. Transponders burn out.
How are these companies going to pay for replacement satellites and their associated launch services? The price paid for the Iridium system ($25 million) would not cover the cost of a single Delta or Ariane launch, not to mention the cost of the replacement satellites.
Those bands definitely are used for other services, and have been for a long time. See this page for listings of US and International frequency allocations.
The text that you quote is in reference to "SYSTEM CACHING", "...the intermediate and temporary storage of material on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider...".
I think this would only apply to things like bulletin boards and news servers that are operated by the service provider.
The ISP therefore HAS TO CUT OFF THE ACCOUNT or risk being sued by the copyright enforcement agency.
I don't think so.
Read the text of the DMCA, specifically Sec. 512. Limitations on liability relating to material online.
By my reading, a service provider has NO liability for material stored on the subscriber's computer, or that transits the service provider's network.
Re:Never trust IBM with software visions (ahem, OS
on
IBM Wants Linux
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· Score: 1
What people like about IBM is their stability and support. Even though they may not be actively selling it, IBM still supports OS/2 and will continue to do so for a long time. That is in stark contrast to other companies that laugh at you if you need support for an "obsolete" product.
Re:OK -- so how about a Test suite ?
on
IBM Wants Linux
·
· Score: 1
The Power workstations/servers (RS/6000 running AIX) and mainframes (S/390 running OS/390) are different product lines, running different operating systems. They have very little in common.
You are correct. It is sitting on my bookshelf at work. It has the assembly listings for the ROM BIOS and the schematics for the motherboard and I/O cards. The only thing missing are the listings for Microsoft's ROM BASIC.
Ballot boxes from opposition strongholds can fall off the back of a truck. The county court house can burn down after the desired results are reported.
The funny thing about that is, the division I'm working for is going to move to a new building this coming May. Evidently, the new policy is that no-one gets an office. No one. Not even the head muckety-muck. This is a division of about 500 people in a company that employs over 100,000 people.
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers^H^H^H^H^H^H^Harchitects. (Apologies to Wm. Shakespeare)
I've always wondered what sort of person comes up with these ideas. They probably pulled the wings off of flies as a child.
Debating whether Windows, Linux, BSD or UNIX is more secure is a waste of time. From a security point of view, they all suck. It's just a matter of degree.
Windows (NT/2000) has some good security features in the kernel, the problem is that they are not properly used by the operating system as distributed by Microsoft. Locking things down would break too much stuff.
UNIX/Linux has an archaic security model that hasn't changed in decades.
Both operating systems suffer from being implemented in C, an unsafe language. It is possible to write secure code in C, but most people have neither the expertise nor time to do it correctly.
Before recent changes in copyright law, copyright infringement was not a criminal offense, it was a civil matter. You could be sued for copyright infringement, but you could not be arrested, tried and put in prison.
Slashdot Mirror
I happen to have quite a few people who live within 150 feet of me, and so do other people who don't live in single family houses on large lots. What happens when everyone in the neighborhood buys one or more of these devices? I like to listen to AM and shortwave radio. This is already difficult due to the high RF noise level. I am also a licensed amateur radio operator. There is no "stuff that isn't being used right now."
If you want increased range, you will have to increase transmitter power (actually ERP) and/or reduce the bit rate. Increasing transmitter power uses more of a limited resource, leaving less for other spectrum users.
There is no free lunch. Any RF communications system, no matter what buzz-words it has, uses RF spectrum. UWB is a broadband noise source. Depending on siting, power levels, and the number of devices deployed, this could cause severe interference to other users of the RF spectrum. Your car may not emit much pollution, but when 5 million of your neighbors drive cars, we have a problem. Due to inadequate FCC regulations, there is already a high level of RF noise in many places.
I've often thought that this could be a profitable new business for the mafia. They could sell spam insurance. Spam one of their customers and you get a free concrete flotation device and a swimming lesson.
Assuming he used PGP, they could have cracked his pass phrase and/or bugged his machine. If the FBI/NSA/CIA is really interested in your mail, you better have a tempest certified computer room with a 24-hour armed guard who can't be bribed. Otherwise, you are screwed.
Several local book stores have had huge piles of Tolkien books for months, crowding out other books in the SF/Fantasy section. I assume this is because of the upcoming movies. I'm not sure if anyone is actually buying the books. Maybe the book stores think that all of the people that see the movie are going to buy three different editions of LotR.
For some reason, this made me think of Army of Darkness. Hordes of evil undead creatures besieging a castle, with Jack Valenti and Hilary Rosen commanding the legions of the damned.
Most modern modems are "software defined". The modem is implemented as software for a general purpose programmable DSP. The "winmodems" just use your system's CPU to replace the DSP on the modem board. The problem with a winmodem is that it replaces a $5 DSP on the modem board with a $200 CPU on your motherboard.
The trick would be to design a reasonably priced receiver that fed the IF into an ADC, allowing a microprocessor to do IF filtering, demodulation etc.
It can happen. The static discharge can produce a short circuit in the chip, resulting in the catastrophic destruction of the chip. I've seen chips with small craters in the middle of the package where the silicon die used to be.
A serial port (RS-232 interface) that can be damaged or destroyed by the static electricity from a user is poorly designed.
That would be a very bad idea. Stable is a relative term. Subscribe to the freebsd-stable mailing list for a while and you will see what I mean. Stable is more stable that current, but it is still a moving target with occasional glitches and bugs. Stick to the release versions if you want to be conservative. Even then, you need to test a new release before using it for mission critical functions.
I remember seeing a schematic for an electronic circuit that explicitly specified a particular Radio Shack part for one of the semiconductor devices. The circuit would not work with commercial quality devices, only the Radio Shack part could be relied upon to have sufficient leakage current, which is normally a bad thing, for the circuit to work.
How are these companies going to pay for replacement satellites and their associated launch services? The price paid for the Iridium system ($25 million) would not cover the cost of a single Delta or Ariane launch, not to mention the cost of the replacement satellites.
Those bands definitely are used for other services, and have been for a long time. See this page for listings of US and International frequency allocations.
I think this would only apply to things like bulletin boards and news servers that are operated by the service provider.
I don't think so.
Read the text of the DMCA, specifically Sec. 512. Limitations on liability relating to material online. By my reading, a service provider has NO liability for material stored on the subscriber's computer, or that transits the service provider's network.
What people like about IBM is their stability and support. Even though they may not be actively selling it, IBM still supports OS/2 and will continue to do so for a long time. That is in stark contrast to other companies that laugh at you if you need support for an "obsolete" product.
The Power workstations/servers (RS/6000 running AIX) and mainframes (S/390 running OS/390) are different product lines, running different operating systems. They have very little in common.
You are correct. It is sitting on my bookshelf at work. It has the assembly listings for the ROM BIOS and the schematics for the motherboard and I/O cards. The only thing missing are the listings for Microsoft's ROM BASIC.
Ballot boxes from opposition strongholds can fall off the back of a truck. The county court house can burn down after the desired results are reported.
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers^H^H^H^H^H^H^Harchitects. (Apologies to Wm. Shakespeare)
I've always wondered what sort of person comes up with these ideas. They probably pulled the wings off of flies as a child.
Windows (NT/2000) has some good security features in the kernel, the problem is that they are not properly used by the operating system as distributed by Microsoft. Locking things down would break too much stuff.
UNIX/Linux has an archaic security model that hasn't changed in decades.
Both operating systems suffer from being implemented in C, an unsafe language. It is possible to write secure code in C, but most people have neither the expertise nor time to do it correctly.
Before recent changes in copyright law, copyright infringement was not a criminal offense, it was a civil matter. You could be sued for copyright infringement, but you could not be arrested, tried and put in prison.
Not in Florida.